SynthesisPain practice : the official journal of World Institute of Pain2025
Neurosurgical management for chronic and end-of-life pain in children: A systematic review.
Synthesis in Pain practice : the official journal of World Institute of Pain, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Neurosurgical management for chronic and end-of-life pain in children: A systematic review.Pain practice : the official journal of World Institute of Pain · 2025Pooled it
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
introductionChronic and end-of-life pain in children is underreported and undermanaged. Current guidelines for pediatric chronic pain include medical and interventional modalities; however, the inclusion of neurosurgical treatments is uncommon and inconsistent. This systematic review presents the literature, and we provide recommendations for the role of neurosurgical procedures in treating chronic and end-of-life pain in children.
methodsA systematic review was conducted in accordance with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-analyses (PRISMA) guidelines using three databases: PubMed, Embase, and Scopus. We included 40 studies presenting neurosurgical procedures for the treatment of chronic and end-of-life pain in children.
resultsThirty-one (77.5%) manuscripts focused on the treatment of neuropathic pain, five (12.5%) focused on nociceptive pain, and four (10%) treated mixed pain conditions. The most common neurosurgical procedure was intrathecal opioid therapy via pump placement (29.3%), followed by spinal cord stimulation (26.8%). Neuropathic pain syndromes were primarily treated with neurostimulation (58%), demonstrating good efficacy. Ablative procedures (40%) were most effective for nociceptive pain syndromes. Both chordotomy and intrathecal pumps provided subjective pain relief for mixed pain syndromes. The quantification of procedural efficacy, including pain outcomes and grading scales, varied significantly across studies.
conclusionNeurosurgical treatments for chronic pediatric pain are safe, although broad efficacy cannot be determined due to sparse literature and inadequately quantified pain responses. Guidelines for escalating chronic and end-of-life pain management in pediatric patients should be updated to include neurosurgical treatments and appropriate outcome scales. Focused research on appropriate patients, available neurosurgical therapies, and pediatric outcomes is warranted.
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Registered trials
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